31.59W 19.03E

Meryon.bridges
Wed 2 Dec 2009 12:30
Dear All
In case you haven't found it yet, our position is now appearing on a map on the website.  If you go to the Mailasail website and click on Diaries and Blogs you should get a listing of all diarists.  If you click on Meryon.bridges you should get an option to look at a map showing our track and latest position.
 
Running Down the Trade Winds
Glorious sailing now.  We are running, running, running westwards at 5-6 knots, covering around 140 miles a day, with a fresh breeze right behind us.  Brilliant blue seas dotted with white crests by day with clusters of flying fish erupting from under our bows.  Fluffy white clouds drift across an azure sky.  By night a full moon lights the restless seascape, and apart from the odd scientifically aimed wave top coming aboard (Peter M managed to collect two the other night), we ride dry across the waters.  Quite large waves roll up astern, perhaps 3 metres high at times, and Ares' stern lifts to them.  As she accelerates forward the wave crest collapses in a gentle roar of bursting foam just behind us and the body of the wave rolls forward under us.  The bows rise, shouldering aside a mass of broken water and we sink into the trough, foam racing past our sides, ready to repeat the process seamlessly and endlessly.  The ceaseless march of waves coming up behind us becomes quite mesmerising, like watching fire.
 
The movement of the boat is quite gentle, though every now and then she shears off to one side or the other and rolls on the face of a wave before "Flossy", our wind vane self steering gear, takes control and straightens her up again.  Down below it's extraodinally peaceful, with almost all the water noises filtered out.  While it's taken us some time to get used to her, and she still sometimes gives us the odd problem, in these conditions Flossy is brilliant, freeing us from the drudgery of manual steering for hour after hour.
 
The proud sailors who run this ship naturally became offended by the sight of the crew, released from steering, now enjoying themselves just lazing about in the blissful warm sunshine, and promptly introduced a rigorous programme of housekeeping, starting with cleaning the loos, where else?  The crew acquiesced to this in good heart but the veiled threat of keel hauling around a winged keel may have heightened their enthusiasm.  They even volunteered to mark up all the tinned goods in the bilge before their labels disolved away though self interest was a big motivator here - sardines with pear halves for pud anyone?  That said, what are GFS?
 
Despite being kindly given these constructive occupations, however, mutinous lot, one succeeded in finding time to compose the following seditious message:
 
From "The Purser":
I sail as the one member of the crew who has not got quite a major psychiatric problem.  While of course I would not dream of discussing this with anybody, Hippocrates said nothing about Blogs.
 
Interestingly the two Navigators/Mechanics as I call them both suffer from the same malady, namely Holden's Variation of the Obsessive Compulsive Syndrome.  From early in the voyage I noticed this manifesting itself in a tendency to stow, unstow, restow lockers, to take things apart and re-assemble them, but what they most like is a problem.  Given a problem, they pronounce it both insoluble and terminal to the success of the enterprise.  They then proceed to repair it and for the next 24 hours they are really quite pleasant.  Unfortunately, deprived of a suitable problem, they become fractious, critical of the hard working crew, etc.
 
To counter this difficulty I and my assistants (of which more later) have come up with a system of minor sabotage.  Amazing what you can do wiuth a screwdriver! I then casually remark that such and such seems a bit loose and they rush off with their spanners, to return quite happy and bearable for the next 24 hours.
 
The fourth member of the party, on coming on board, immediately set up a graven image next to the fridge.  This took some hours of work and at the end it bore a remarkable resemblance to a car radio.  Now he spends many hours before it, head bowed and eyes closed.  Apparently it is called a "thing" and it has a very full sex life.  At least he often remarks that it is "copulating" (delicacy restrains me from using the actual phrase).  He also confides that he is having trouble with his USB Port.  I was not quite sure what he meant by this until last night, while on watch chatting to my assistants, it came to me.  During my time in the profession I have heard that part of the anatomy described coyly in so many different ways (an RAF man who kept referring to his afterburner had me fooled for weeks), but I must admit that USB Port is a new one for me.  I intend to sidle up to him tomorrow with a tube of soothing cream and advise him to put it on his "USB Port" twice daily and after defecation.
 
My assistants are of course the big news - we have two beautiful mermaids in the forepeak and during my watch at night they come and join me in the cockpit.  One of them sings beautifully, angelically would not be too strong a word, while the other chats to me about my problems and we plan he Navigators' problem list for the following day. 
 
I may say I feel so happy.  Woof, Woof -  The Pursar
 
 

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